Page 18 of Breaking Danger (Ghost Ops #3)

CHAPTER SIX

San Francisco

Beach Street

She was so light in his arms. It surprised him.

She seemed so…invincible. He’d been at the Arka Pharmaceutical headquarters building as the infection had broken out.

He and Nick had barely gotten out alive, and they were highly trained warriors.

She’d not only broken away from her captors, she’d taken the time to search for the original virus and the vaccine, fighting both Arka’s security goons and the infected.

And then she’d made her way across a city in chaos.

Trapped in her home, she’d spent her time studying the infected and already had pointers which were going to help them evade the enemy. Were already proving useful to the Haven team out in the field.

Now, this was Ghost Ops terrain. They’d been trained and trained hard to study and understand the enemy.

When he’d been undercover in Columbia, he’d studied the jefes and the muscle so much he knew everything about them, down to their diet, their bowel movements, the women they really fucked, the women they pretended to.

What they bought, who they bought. He knew it all.

Nothing had escaped his notice, nothing.

And yet, flying over infected terrain, it hadn’t even occurred to him to try to study patterns.

Ok, he was flying over the terrain pretty fast but he hadn’t been thinking of anything but getting to Sophie Daniels before a monster ate her face.

Still, he could have observed movements, migrations patterns, drawn some conclusions.

He was heartsick, but that wasn’t an excuse. Sophie’d been heartsick too and she had pages and pages of observations.

So besides being as beautiful as a movie star, she was smart and brave. Resourceful, rational.

And, oh so delicate.

He could feel this in his arms. When they’d had frantic sex right after he fell into her apartment he’d been too blasted with survivor’s lust, guided by his combat boner, to notice much of anything besides how good she felt and how good she tasted.

But now?

Now he could feel how incredibly delicate she was, one arm around a slender torso, the other under long slender legs.

Everything about her was fragile, hidden before because she was so smart and so courageous.

Her soft cotton tee gaped open, showing the delicate collar bones, the narrow shoulders.

Such courage, such spirit in such a fragile body.

Jon didn’t have to ask where the bedroom was. Away from the door with its potpourri and scented candles and air freshener sprays, there was another source of good smells and he simply followed his nose.

Good soldiers have a keen sense of smell and he was one of the best. He simply followed the scent for the room that smelled of Sophie. There was a short corridor and he nudged the door with his foot and… bingo!

The blinds were drawn, one small light on a dresser, the rest in shadow. It was a girly girl’s room and he nearly smiled. The bed was an ode to femininity—frills and flounces and floral sheets and a billion pillows. Most unusual for a no-nonsense scientist.

He looked down at her and finally smiled.

It was genuine, a light hearted moment while the world burned around them.

Jon’s few smiles were a cynic’s smile. He had no illusions about the world and the people in it.

There were a lot of things he found grimly humorous—the hypocrisy most people tried badly to hide.

The greedy, grasping nature of most people.

People were like children, with uncontrollable urges and appetities.

If you had a cynic’s sense of humor, the world was a feast.

But right now, he had an extraordinarily beautiful and brave and smart woman in his arms, who had shown nothing but a sense of sacrifice. His usual cynicism somehow wouldn’t kick in. His smile reflected how good she felt in his arms, how pretty that bed was, what they were going to do on that bed.

Sophie’s hand cupped his cheek. “You smile.”

He moved his head until her hand covered his mouth, then kissed the palm of her hand. “Look carefully because it doesn’t happen often.”

“No.” Her own smile disappeared. “Not much to smile about right now.”

Jon placed her carefully on the bed, like depositing a jewel in its box. “Well, right right now, things aren’t looking so bad.”

A laugh escaped her and she covered her mouth, as if laughter were forbidden. Jon gently brought her hand away from her mouth, brought it to his, kissed the palm.

“You laugh.”

She nodded. “That surprised even me.”

Jon looked down at her, at this unexpected pearl that had been given to him.

He lay his hand on her flat belly, absorbing the warmth of her skin through the thin tee.

He shifted his hand, started pulling it up.

With his other hand, he lifted her shoulders off the bed while pulling the tee up and off.

She wasn’t wearing a bra and she wasn’t wearing panties so after he’d slipped the thin cotton pants off her hips and down her legs, she was naked and he almost closed his eyes against the picture she made on the bed.

Too much. Too much beauty. Too much sentiment in her eyes as she watched him. She didn’t try to cover herself up and she didn’t try to preen. She just lay there, open to him, watching him watching her.

He put his hand back on her belly, relishing the feel of her skin now that he didn’t have to feel it through cloth.

“Now you,” Sophie said and at first he didn’t understand what she meant. The gears in his head weren’t meshing too well. Then—”Oh.” She wanted him naked, too.

Oh, yeah.

In a second he’d stripped, as fast as he could because he didn’t want to lift his hand from Sophie for anything.

“You’re so beautiful,” she whispered.

Jon didn’t look down at himself. He knew what he looked like. Though he couldn’t recall a hard-on quite as hard as the one he was sporting now. He didn’t have to look down to know his dick was like a rock and immensely swollen. It fucking hurt.

“Am I?” he whispered back. She nodded. “That should be my line.”

Sophie smiled, placed her hand over his.

Jon shut his eyes, his hand on Sophie’s belly, her hand over his, the heat from her hand rising up his arm. He stood stock still, immense tension in every muscle in his body.

And he realized—“I can’t go slow, Sophie.” He shook his head. “Sorry. Maybe I should—” He didn’t finish the rest of the sentence because he was tempted to offer something he didn’t think he could make good on. Like offering to step back, step away.

Luckily, it didn’t make any difference because Sophie tugged on his forearm and he fell onto her. Just like before, only this time they were naked and he knew what to expect.

Out of this world pleasure, that’s what he was expecting. And that’s what he got.

Warmth spread all along his body where they met.

Sophie twined her arms around his neck, opened her mouth under his and that warmth kicked up to heat. That honeyed pleasure flowing through his veins became prickling heat right under his skin, requiring immediate action.

A second later, he slid into her—into that hot secret place between her thighs—and a second after that his body slammed into action. It was completely beyond his control as he hammered into her, holding her hips with his hands.

Some very very dim part of his mind was exerting overwatch, if not control. If he had felt anything less than welcome, anything less than desire on her part, he’d have stopped. He hoped.

As it was, Sophie was with him every step of the way, her body completely open to him, slick with juices that eased his way, holding him tightly with her arms and legs. Matching him, movement for movement.

It was so intense, so hot, it couldn’t last, and it didn’t.

Sophie tightened around his dick, threw her head back against the pillow and emitted a low moan that came out stuttering because he was moving in her so strongly.

She dug her nails into his back, tightened around him again and again.

Her orgasm pushed him right off the edge and into another world of heat and light where he had to hold his breath as his body went into overdrive.

He slammed into her, moving easily now since she was slick with juices, in a frenzy of heat so great he thought he would blow up.

And then he did.

Great shuddering convulsions so intense his eyes rolled back under his lids and his toes curled.

It went on forever as every ounce of liquid in his body poured into her and at the very last moment, just as he began to still, she convulsed again, lifting her hips up against him by leveraging herself up with her legs.

She rotated her hips and arched her back to take more of him, breaths coming in pants against his ear, clenching tightly around him in pulls so strong he could feel her stomach muscles working against his abdomen.

At the same moment, they blew out great gusty breaths and stilled.

Jon collapsed bonelessly on her, every cell of his body drenched in pleasure.

He should move. He was heavy and he was sure he was crushing her, but damn.

This felt so…fucking… good . He couldn’t even think through the pleasure signals zapping through his body.

That constant awareness he had at all times, the bit of himself he kept separate and vigilant, had taken a hike.

The movie screen in his head started to blur, show static.

He made one last heroic effort and cranked an eyelid open. All he really saw was a delicate jawbone, a small pink ear and a cloud of dark shiny hair. But his hazy mind could fill in the rest. Sophie.

Everything felt so damned good exactly as he was, including his half-limp dick nestled deep within her. Oh man, that felt particularly good, like his own personal dick holster.

Mmmm.